Data, Information and Process Integration with Semantic Web Services

DIP

Data, Information and Process Integration with Semantic Web Services

FP6 - 507483

Deliverable

WP 12: Market Observation

D12.5

White Paper on Roadmaps and Potential Use Cases for SWS (Business Activity Monitoring with SWS)

Joachim Quantz (Berlecon Research)

Thorsten Wichmann (Berlecon Research)

Bernhard Schreder (NIWA)

Aleksandar Balaban (NIWA)

Alexander Wahler (NIWA)

January 2006

/ FP6 – 507483
Deliverable 12.5

Executive Summary

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) aims at providing business experts with real-time information on business processes. The term BAM is mostly used by vendors from the BPM area (Business Process Management), but similar solutions are also provided by vendors in the areas Business Intelligence (BI) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM). These vendors do not generally use the term BAM but rather refer to their solutions as Management Cockpits or Business Dashboards.

The main purpose of BAM solutions is to provide business experts responsible for business processes or parts of business processes with all information relevant for optimally executing and managing these processes. In addition to providing concise high-level information, BAM solutions also offer drill down functionality to access detailed information when needed. Thus, a simple speedometer-like tool might indicate the status of an important KPI (Key Performance Indicator) by using green and red areas. If the index of the KPI is in the red area, experts can drill down and look at more details concerning the problem’s sources.

BAM can contribute substantially to process optimization and is thus of growing interest to companies. Although solutions similar to BAM have been available for some time already, there are a number of characteristics which distinguish BAM from these solutions:

Real-time character
Integration of analytic evaluation into operative process executions
Low development costs
Wide range of target users

There are basically two application scenarios for SWS in BAM:

Semantic Information in Monitoring and Management: SWS could help to improve the current state of the art in BAM significantly, by allowing the combination of execution data with service metadata and additional ontological information.
Semantic Business Rules and Policies: Current BAM solutions already offer basic functionality for modelling such rules. However, they use proprietary formats and do not support semantic information.

In the larger sense the deliverable contributes to the DIP goal of exploitable tools, as it provides information on application areas in which tools could be successfully exploited.

The deliverable should be read by anyone involved in exploitation of DIP results and in strategic planning of future work to be performed in DIP.

Disclaimer: The DIP Consortium is proprietary. There is no warranty for the accuracy or completeness of the information, text, graphics, links or other items contained within this material. This document represents the common view of the consortium and does not necessarily reflect the view of the individual partners.

DocumentInformation

IST Project Number / FP6 – 507483 / Acronym / DIP
Full title / Data, Information, and Process Integration with Semantic Web Services
Project URL /
Document URL
EU Project officer / Kai Tullius
Deliverable / Number / 12.5 / Title / White Paper on Roadmaps and Potential Use Cases for SWS (Business Activity Monitoring with SWS)
Work package / Number / 12 / Title / Market Observation
Date of delivery / Contractual / M 24 / Actual / M25 (January 2006)
Status / V1.0 / Final Version
Nature / Prototype  Report  Dissemination 
Dissemination Level / Public  Consortium
Authors (Partner) / Joachim Quantz (Berlecon), Thorsten Wichmann (Berlecon) Bernhard Schreder (NIWA), Aleksandar Balaban (NIWA), Alexander Wahler (NIWA)
Responsible Author / Joachim Quantz / Email /
Partner / Berlecon / Phone / +49 30 28 52 96 0
Abstract
(for dissemination) / Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) aims at providing business experts with real-time information on business processes. The deliverable analyzes the potential of Semantic Web Services in the application area of Business Activity Monitoring (BAM). It ends with recommendations for the DIP project.
Keywords / Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), Semantic Web Services, Business Process Management (BPM), Business Intelligence (BI)

Project Consortium Information

Partner / Acronym / Contact
National University of Ireland Galway / NUIG
/ Prof. Dr. Christoph Bussler
Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI)
National University of Ireland, Galway
Galway
Ireland
Email:
Tel: +353 91 512460
Fundacion De La Innovacion.Bankinter / Bankinter
/ Monica Martinez Montes
Fundacion de la Innovation. BankInter
Paseo Castellana, 29
28046 Madrid,
Spain
Email:
Tel: 916234238
Berlecon Research GmbH / Berlecon
/ Dr. Thorsten Wichmann
Berlecon Research GmbH
Oranienburger Str. 32
10117 Berlin,
Germany
Email:
Tel: +49 30 2852960
British Telecommunications Plc. / BT
/ Dr John Davies
BT Exact (Orion Floor 5 pp12)
Adastral Park Martlesham
Ipswich IP5 3RE,
United Kingdom
Email:
Tel: +44 1473 609583
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne / EPFL
/ Prof. Karl Aberer
Distributed Information Systems Laboratory
École Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne
Bât. PSE-A
1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Email:
Tel: +41 21 693 4679
Essex County Council / Essex
/ Mary Rowlatt,
Essex County Council
PO Box 11, County Hall, Duke Street
Chelmsford, Essex, CM1 1LX
United Kingdom.
Email:
Tel: +44 (0)1245 436524
Forschungszentrum Informatik / FZI
/ Andreas Abecker
Forschungszentrum Informatik
Haid-und-Neu Strasse 10-14
76131 Karlsruhe
Germany
Email:
Tel: +49 721 9654 0
Partner / Acronym / Contact
Institut für Informatik, Leopold-Franzens Universität Innsbruck / UIBK
/ Prof. Dieter Fensel
Institute of computer science
University of Innsbruck
Technikerstr. 25
A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Email:
Tel: +43 512 5076485
ILOG SA / ILOG
/ Christian de Sainte Marie
9 Rue de Verdun, 94253
Gentilly, France
Email:
Tel: +33 1 49082981
inubit AG / Inubit
/ Torsten Schmale
inubit AG
Lützowstraße 105-106
D-10785 Berlin
Germany
Email:
Tel:+49 30726112 0
Intelligent Software Components, S.A. / iSOCO
/ Dr. V. Richard Benjamins, Director R&D
Intelligent Software Components, S.A.
Pedro de Valdivia 10
28006 Madrid, Spain
Email:
Tel. +34 913 349 797
NIWA WEB Solutions / NIWA
/ Alexander Wahler
NIWA WEB Solutions
Niederacher & Wahler OEG
Kirchengasse 13/1a
A-1070 Wien
Email:
Tel:+43(0)1 3195843-11 |
The Open University / OU
/ Dr. John Domingue
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Walton Hall
Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA
United Kingdom
Email:
Tel.: +44 1908 655014
SAP AG / SAP
/ Dr. Elmar Dorner
SAP Research, CEC Karlsruhe
SAP AG
Vincenz-Priessnitz-Str. 1
76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
Email:
Tel: +49 721 6902 31
Sirma AI Ltd. / Sirma
/ Atanas Kiryakov,
Ontotext Lab, - Sirma AI EAD
Office Express IT Centre, 3rd Floor
135 Tzarigradsko Chausse
Sofia 1784, Bulgaria
Email:
Tel.: +359 2 9768 303
Unicorn Solution Ltd. / Unicorn
/ Jeff Eisenberg
Unicorn Solutions Ltd,
Malcha Technology Park 1
Jerusalem 96951
Israel
Email:
Tel.: +972 2 6491111
Vrije Universiteit Brussel / VUB
/ Carlo Wouters
Starlab- VUB
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Pleinlaan 2, G-10
1050 Brussel ,Belgium
Email:
Tel.: +32 (0) 2 629 3719

Executive Summary

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

2 The Concept of Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)

2.1 Vision of BAM

2.2 Technological Basis

2.3 Examples of BAM Applications

3 Benefits and Challenges

3.1 Real-Time Monitoring

3.2 Error Recovery, Exception Handling, and Automated Decision-Making

3.3 Explicit Process Models

3.4 Business Rules and Policies

3.5 BAM Application Scenario “Webhosting”

3.6 Summary of Benefits and Challenges

4 Vendor Landscape

4.1 The Four Big Enterprise Software Vendors

4.2 BPM Vendors

4.3 BI/CPM Vendors

4.4 BAM Vendors

4.5 Summary of Vendor Landscape and Expected Trends

5 SWS Potential in BAM

5.1 Semantic Information in Monitoring and Management

5.2 Semantic Business Rules and Policies

6 Recommendations for DIP

7 References

1Introduction

Work Package 12 provides the DIP consortium and in particular the technology providers in DIP with real-world background information on potential application areas for Semantic Web Services (SWS). This work was started with Section 3 in Deliverable D12.1 [1], which briefly evaluated the potential of Semantic Web Services in the application areas of business process management, content syndication, contextual ads, enterprise application integration, enterprise collaboration, product information management, single European electronic market, search/mining, and social software. Based on these initial evaluations, Section 4 of D12.1 [1], D12.3 [2], and D12.4 [3] contained an in-depth analysis of the potential of SWS in the application areas Business Process Management, Enterprise Collaboration, and Search respectively.

This deliverable analyzes the potential of Semantic Web Services in the application area of Business Activity Monitoring (BAM). Section 2 presents the concept of BAM and explains both the vision underlying BAM and its technological basis. It also describes some application scenarios in which BAM solutions are currently used. Section 3 discusses the major benefits (real-time monitoring, error recovery, exception handling, and decision automation) and challenges (explicit process models and business rules/policies). It also contains a section presenting a specific application scenario, namely Web hosting. Section 4 provides an overview over the current vendor landscape and explains the main characteristics of BAM solutions from various vendor groups.

Based on this analysis of the current BAM market, Section 5 evaluates the potential of applying SWS in BAM. Two main application scenarios are addressed:

Using semantic information in monitoring and management
A semantic approach to business rules and policies

The deliverable ends with recommendations for the DIP project (Section 6).

The approach taken in this deliverable and in WP12 in general is market or application driven rather than technology driven. The analysis thus starts with an assessment of the currently available commercial solutions in the application area. Based on these results, the potential of SWS technology is evaluated in a second step, focussing on how SWS could be integrated into existing solutions in order to enhance these solutions, make them more efficient, or provide significant value-add with respect to costs or quality.

D12.1 distinguishes two variants of Semantic Web Services: “on the one hand, Web Services and their descriptions can be semantically enriched to enhance the potential for discovering and combining services. On the other hand, Web Services can be used to provide interfaces to existing Semantic Web technology, e.g. ontologies or logic-based reasoners” [1, p. 1]. The analysis in this deliverable takes into account both variants of SWS, although DIP focuses only on the former variant.

2The Concept of Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)

This section introduces the concept of Business Activity Monitoring (BAM). Section 2.1 describes the vision underlying BAM and Section 2.2 explains its technological basis. Section 2.3 describes some application scenarios in which BAM solutions are currently used.

2.1Vision of BAM

Information is provided on the business level and is thus not restricted to purely technical information;
Information is presented in a concise form, often using graphical interfaces similar to tools used in car dashboards or airplane cockpits, e.g. speedometers.

In addition to providing concise high-level information, BAM solutions also offer drill down functionality to access detailed information when needed. Thus, a simple speedometer-like tool might indicate the status of an important KPI (Key Performance Indicator) by using green and red areas. If the index of the KPI is in the red area, experts can drill down and look at more details concerning the problem’s sources.

BAM can contribute substantially to process optimization and is thus of growing interest to companies:

Automated monitoring of process parameters reduces the manual effort and costs;
Providing decision makers with relevant information in real-time reduces the time needed to react to events, exceptions and errors, thereby
Increasing the process quality and
Avoiding follow-up costs induced by unnoticed errors;
Providing comprehensive information and drill-down functionality prevents experts from making wrong decisions based on incomplete or outdated information

Although solutions similar to BAM have been available for some time already, there are a number of characteristics which distinguish BAM from these solutions:

Real-time character
Integration of analytic evaluation into operative process executions
Low development costs
Wide range of target users

The real-time character of BAM distinguishes it from most BI solutions, which usually evaluate data in batch mode and provide input for long-term strategic decisions. BAM, on the other hand, makes information available in real-time, or more precisely, at the time when users need it to manage processes and make decisions in everyday operative work.

In doing so, BAM also helps to establish a single point of truth, ensuring that managers and employees use the same information for their decisions and operations. To achieve this, however, all systems and applications involved in a business process have to be technically integrated. Many enterprises have established such an integration level as a result of extensive integration projects conducted within the last years.

BAM allows the integration of analytical information into operative business execution. Evaluation of data thus helps to manage processes more efficiently and to optimize them. This is sometimes called embedded analytics or operative BI. For example, when approving a customer order, the employee responsible for the approval will be able to access extensive data concerning the creditworthiness of the customer, e.g. external credit rating, payment history, pending orders, etc.

Since the beginning of the 90s, many companies have developed so-called enterprise information systems or management information systems. These systems were only used by the upper management, however. Not because they would not have been useful for other employees, but mainly because development costs were so high that they could only be justified for management usage.

Compared to these traditional enterprise information systems, BAM solutions are easier to develop and less expensive. This is mainly due to two factors:

Advanced integration technologies
Easy to use web interfaces

Integration technologies have advanced significantly in recent years: due to extensive EAI projects, XML, Web Services and SOAs (Service-Oriented Architectures), many enterprises are now able to exchange data between systems and applications more or less straightforwardly.

Web interfaces, on the other hand, simplify the development and maintenance of flexible and personalized user interfaces. They eliminate the need to develop, install and maintain complex user clients and also reduce the costs for training users. Once installed by an administrator, most BAM solutions offer simple templates and choices to end-users. Business experts can thus customize visualizations according to their needs and preferences without the need to involve expensive developers or administrators.

Due to comparatively low development costs, BAM solutions can be offered profitably to a large user base within an enterprise. At the same time, more and more employees in a company are involved in decision-making, mainly because the need for fast and efficient decisions has increased considerably over the last years.

2.2Technological Basis

From a technological point of view, three levels can be distinguished in the development of BAM solutions (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Three technical levels of BAM solutions

Collecting and integrating data and events from various systems and application, either directly or indirectly via a central BPM/EAI solution
Processing and evaluating the collected data. This includes, for example, target-performance comparisons, examination of thresholds, combination of data from different sources, or checks for violations of business rules or policies.
Forwarding the compiled information to the employees or managers requiring it and presenting it visually. This includes, for example, visualization of process states, generation of alerts and escalation options in problematic or exceptional situations, or comparison of current data with averages.

There are two major aspects in which BAM solutions differ from each other:

Some solutions use an explicit process model, whereas others just collect and present process information without such a model;
Some solutions are built on top of an integration solution, whereas others collect data directly from various systems and applications without using an integration solution.

Whether a BAM solution is integrated with an integration platform and supports process models largely depends on the background of the respective vendor. Obviously, BAM solutions from BPM vendors focus on process models and platform integration. BAM solutions from BI vendors, on the other hand, tend to lack these features, emphasizing complex analytical applications instead (see Section 4).

Some BAM solutions can be deployed both as stand-alone solutions and on top of an underlying integration platform. The latter is usually easier as the integration of different data sources is already provided by the underlying platform. In stand-alone deployment this integration has to be implemented in the BAM solution itself. Some solutions provide a light-weight EAI environment for this – with adaptors for the most common applications and systems.